At the Occupy protest this afternoon at Chase Bank, the protesters made some savvy moves: They picked a good location (with the backdrop of a big bank to reinforce their message). The five primary arrestees engaged in a nonviolent action (linking chained arms in the lobby). Then after a theatrical display of protest in the street—and, man, that was quite a show—they hightailed it out to the next action downtown. Calculated, minimal arrests, got everyone's attention. Bravo.
But some of the protesters were violent. As you can see in the videos that Frizzelle shot (at about the 2:30 mark in the first video), some protesters were pushing a bicycle into the police who had their backs up against a van.
As the SPD Blotter now reports, "At least 10 officers (nine officers and one sergeant) were physically assaulted while facilitating the removal of the arrested suspects from the scene. Pepper spray was deployed to provide cover for the officers under attack and to disperse the assailants." Do I like pepper spraying protesters? Fuck no. But if people are picking up a 20-pound hunk of metal and trying to smash it into the faces of officers again and again, then yeah—pepper spray seems pretty reasonable. True, the cops were trying to get the protesters to move back, but cops can do that when they're arresting someone. Pushing the bike back into the cops' face—that's not nonviolent. The protesters laying on the ground in front of the van, so that it couldn't drive away, because that would mean crushing them—that's non-violence. Despite it all, most cops kept their cool and stayed professional. Bravo.
Throughout it all, the protesters kept chanting "The whole world is watching." Yup, we are. We're watching the majority of peaceful protesters see their movement marred by a few hotheads. But again, this was a successful action. It would be more successful if Occupiers could make this an entirely nonviolent movement. Right now, some protesters are making it violent movement. That sucks for the majority of protesters, who are civil.
